[thelist] Two Questions about E-mails

[deke]

On 6 Jan 2002 at 13:43, Syed Zeeshan Haider posted a message which 
said:

> Hello Everybody,
> Sometimes I receive an e-mail from some sender. In "To:" and "From:"
> fields of the mail same address is seen and this address is of the
> sender. Here's the example: To:        Someone at Somedomain.com From:   
> Someone at Somedomain.com How is it made possible? This is common in
> newsletters e-mails or any mails which are sent to many recipients. Can
> somebody explain me how does this work? Can a sender hide his/her e-mail
> address from the recipients? If yes then how? Thank you! Syed Zeeshan
> Haider. http://syedzeeshanhaider.faithweb.com/

If you wrote a memo at the office to 13 different people, you would 
need to make 13 copies of the memo, run a yellow highlighter through a 
different recipient's name, and toss them in the outbox. If you wanted 
to make Steve look like he *ignored* the memo, you'd make one fewer
copy and not highlight his name on any.  If you wanted to "leak" the 
information to the press, you'd make an *extra* copy, stick it in an 
envelope, and mail it to Jimmy Olsen.

Works exactly the same way in email. The "To:" and "From:" headers are 
advisory only; maybe all those people got copies of the email, and only 
those people got copies, but if it does, it's because the person who 
sent it out was being honest.

There's an "electronic envelope" on email that says where *this* copy 
of the email goes. Otherwise, you'd have to figure out how to use a 
yellow highlighter on bits and bytes. 

deke
--------
We are the parents our people warned us about....